Voters awake: Australia needs each and every one of you

IN MODERN democracies like Australia's it is essential that the
maximum number of people vote at elections.We have had compulsory
enrolment since 1911 and compulsory voting since 1924. The latter
works  we can confidently predict that around 93 per cent of
electors will turn out on November 24.

What is less certain is how many eligible citizens are not on
the roll and therefore won't vote. Official figures suggest that 93
per cent of citizens living in Australia are on the roll. This is
impressive by world standards, but its flip side is that nearly one
million citizens are not enrolled to vote.

Of equal concern is the estimated 1 million Australians living
overseas. Before the 2004 election, only 16,193 of them were
enrolled, so the tally of non-enrollees is probably closer to two
million, or 15 per cent of the enrolment of 13.6 million.

Why so many? One reason is that while the Australian Electoral
Commission (AEC) is required to remove ineligible people from the
roll, it is constrained in enrolling the people who are
eligible.

Australians are a mobile mob. When the AEC discovers, by mining
databases such as driver's license registers, that a person has
left their electorate, they take their name off the roll. In the
past six months 143,000 names have been removed, and we can't be
certain how many have re-enrolled.

The AEC then writes to the person at their new address inviting
them to fill out a new enrolment form. Whether that invitation is
accepted is effectively in the hands of the individual, as it is
extremely rare for anyone to be prosecuted for non-enrolment.

Over time, the roll becomes increasingly inaccurate and, short
of a change in the law, there is little the AEC can do about
it.

Another group that contributes to roll inaccuracy is the young.
Only around 80 per cent of Australians aged 18-24 are enrolled and
the ratio varies greatly from state to state, with Victoria
consistently the highest and the Northern Territory the lowest.

Worryingly, some young people wrongly believe that when they
turn 18 they are automatically entered on the roll. Perhaps they
should be.

Since early this year, the AEC has been conducting a $15 million
media campaign to get young people, especially 18-year-olds, on the
roll. The campaign was slick, but its success was limited.

At the 2004 election, 18-year-olds comprised 1.43 per cent of
the total roll; now they account for 1.51 per cent. That's not much
bang for a lot of taxpayer bucks.

In 1983, the Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended to require a
seven-day grace period between the calling of the election and the
closure of the roll. The thinking was that an election would jog
people's memories about their enrolment status.

In 2004, 423,993 citizens made good their enrolment details in
the seven-day period, about 78,000 of them new enrollees. Another
115,000 missed the cut.

When it took control of the Senate, the Howard Government cut
the grace period for new enrolments to one working day. It defended
this by saying the AEC could not properly check the flood of
enrolments during the seven days and that this left the door open
to roll fraud. This spurious argument suggests the real motive was
politics. Remember, the young strongly support Labor and the
Greens.

Remarkably and inexplicably, when the Prime Minister announced
the date for this election, the writ was not issued the next day,
but on the following Wednesday. This kept the roll open for three
days, during which 77,000 enrolment additions were processed 
we don't yet know how many of these were new.

Given the earlier grandstanding about roll fraud, why did the
government do this? Could it be that it doubted the
constitutionality of excluding voters from the roll in the wake of
the High Court's recent decision to invalidate a law denying all
convicted prisoners the vote? Or was it because, despite the $15
million ad campaign, the enrolment rates of the young were still so
low as to be politically embarrassing? We will probably never
know.

Peter Brent is a researcher at the Australian National
University. Brian Costar is a professor of political science in the
Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University.

1193619198618-theage.com.auhttp://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/voters-awake-australia-needs-each-and-every-one-of-you/2007/11/03/1193619198618.htmltheage.com.auThe Age2007-11-04Voters awake: Australia needs each and every one of youPeter Brent and Brian CostarOpinion